Sith Happened

I’m not sure where to start. Random thoughts below, including spoilers. Not that it really matters. Anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock for the last twenty years already knows all the major plot points. And the details… well, you’re probably better off making up your own. I know many, many people, most of them not even professional writers, who could have come up with a more compelling second act.

R2-D2 is a little bastard. Think about it: he knows everything. EVERYTHING. The complete history, all the facts, all the secrets, and what does he do? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. Maybe he’s bitter– and rightfully so– about being treated like a slave all the time, but when entire planets are being destroyed and millions of people are being massacred, you’d think he could at least step up and say something. Anything. But no, he just hangs out and watches it all go to shit. Fucker.

And Obi-Wan? Also a fucker. (Or, if you prefer, “tosser.”) Sure, when your best friend turns on you and betrays everything you believe in, you gotta put him down, but at least finish him off– don’t leave him on the ground to die of third-degree burns. It’s just plain cruel to let him suffer like that, even if he is evil. And don’t tell me the Jedi code forbids killing, because dude, there ain’t no “stun” setting on a lightsaber.

I wasn’t convinced by Anakin’s supposedly precognitive dreams. I needed more than two short, blurry shots to make it real.

If I were one of the Wookiee actors, I would hate George Lucas. Sure, man, we’ll spend hours getting into full body costume and makeup and run around for weeks sweating our asses off just so you can get barely five minutes of footage that doesn’t even belong in this movie and has absolutely no impact on the plot or characters. Sure. No problem. Just make sure there’s raw meat on the craft services table.

Apparently, the new Star Wars movies are all about spaceships landing and taking off, because I swear half the running time of Episode III was devoted to that. Lucas has a vehicle fetish, but I guess we’ve known that since American Graffiti.

Okay, the special effects were awesome, but it was all sound and fury. There were some good ideas in the story, and the plot points all got connected as they needed to be, but it could have been so much more: more interesting, more human, more real.

Sure, if you go in wanting to fill in the blanks, you can make yourself believe that it’s a grand tragedy, but it’s not on the page. The writing, to be blunt, sucks bantha ass. And the acting? There’s a reason Lucas calls actors “trick talking meat”– he’s got no respect for the art. They’re just dolls (sorry, “action figures”) to him, pieces to move around in his demented little play that is a mere shadow of the great works it imitates.

I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid. You drooling fanboys can all go straight to pants.